Face to Face with the Mexicans by Fanny Chambers Gooch

First published in 1887, Gooch's Face to Face with the Mexicans, is on-line here in a very readable format. It includes the many charming illustrations by Isabel V. Waldo, as well as portraits of the characters in my novel, Agustin de Iturbide y Green and his mother, Dona Alicia Green de Iturbide.

Note: an edited (severely abridged) version with an introduction by C.H. Gardiner was published by Southern Illinois University Press in 1966. However, said version does not include the material about the Iturbides.

More anon.

Washington DC Writers's Houses

Via Dan Vera's Wonder Machine, his and Kim Roberts's very cool project to photograph Washington DC area writers's residences. Pictured left is Ambrose Bierce's Logan Circle apartment (and click here to read DC area poet M.A. Schaffner's work on Beltway about Bierce.). Here are a few more, yet to be listed, whom I am quite curious about:
--->Frances Calderon de la Barca, author of Life in Mexico
She met her husband, a Spanish diplomat, in Washington
--->Frances Hodgson Burnett, author of the childrens's classic The Little Princess, The Lost Prince, The Secret Garden and Little Lord Fauntleroy
I believe she lived on Connecticut Avenue.
--->Fanny Chambers Gooch, author of Face to Face with the Mexicans
I know she was in Washington for a time and had many Washington connections.
--->Henry Ridgley Evans, author of numerous works, including Old Georgetown on the Potomac, a biography of Cagliostro, and many on Freemasonry
This high-ranking Freemason and all-around very curious person lived on I Street NW. I have the address somewhere... I came across Evans's works when I was researching Georgetown history for my novel, The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire. There is an ample collection of his books in the Georgetown Public Library's Peabody Room.
More anon.

Fanny Chambers Gooch: Face to Face with the Mexicans

Fascinating discussion today with the Mexican translator of Fanny Chambers Gooch's classic tome, Face to Face with the Mexicans: the domestic life, educational, social and business ways, statesmanship and literature, legendary and general history of the Mexican people, as seen and studied by an American woman during seven years of intercourse with them. This richly documented 584 page portrait of Porfirian Mexico was originally published in 1887 and not brought out in Spanish until about 10 years ago. A severely abridged version, of which Madam Mayo does not approve, was published by University of Southern Illinois in 1966. Links anon.